Cooling a Heat Sink with Convective and Radiative Heat Transfer - Simulation Example

This simulation example is an extension of the "Cooling a Heat Sink with Convective Heat Transfer" case. Heat sinks dissipate energy to the surroundings through three processes: conduction, convection and radiation. Quite often, radiation heat transfer is ignored because its contribution is much smaller compared to convective heat transfer. However, to accurately predict the heat dissipated by the heat sink, radiation heat transfer should also be considered. While heat rejection through radiation may be small, it can be the difference between a component overheating or staying within the required thermal operational range.

In this simulation example, you will learn how to set up a problem in Ansys Fluent to calculate the heat transfer rates from a heat sink that dissipates heat by all three modes: conduction, convection and radiation. You will also perform a comparison of the results from this case with those from a simulation involving only convective heat transfer.